This work
examines the influence of personality factors on willingness to participate in
studies. Participants were recruited either via a market research firm or via a
face-to-face interception technique. In addition to completing their required
tasks, all 256 participants subsequently completed the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI). The type distributions from the market research task and the
interception task were compared to that of the normative United State National
Representative Sample (US NRS). Personality type distributions from the market
research recruited participants and the interception recruited participants
were found to be significantly different to the US NRS. Further, all
over-represented personality types were either Intuitive-Feeling (NF) or
Intuitive-Thinking types (NT) and so shared the common trait of “Intuition”
whereas all underrepresented types shared the opposing trait of “Sensing” and
were either Sensing-Thinking (SN) or Sensing-Feeling (NF) types. Results suggest
that personality factors affect a person’s decision to participate in a study.
Importantly, since personality type has not usually been part of selection
criteria in past studies it may be that a systematic non-response bias may
unknowingly have always existed. The implications of such a bias on the true
state of knowledge regarding human behavior are potentially profound.

Hicks, L. E. (1984). Conceptual and Empirical Analysis of Some Assumptions of an Explicitly Typological Theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 1118-1131. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.46.5.1118

Marcus, B., & Schütz, A. (2005). Who Are the People Reluctant to Participate in Research? Personality Correlates of Four Different Types of Nonresponse as Inferred from Self- and Observer Ratings. Journal of Personality, 73, 959-984. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2005.00335.x